In every civilized society there is found a race of men who retain
the instincts of the aboriginal cannibal, and live upon their
fellow-men as a natural food. These interesting but formidable
bipeds, having caught their victim, invariably select one part of
his body on which to fasten their relentless grinders. The part
thus selected is peculiarly susceptible, Providence having made it
alive to the least nibble; it is situated just above the hip-joint,
it is protected by a tegument of exquisite fibre, vulgarly called
"THE BREECHES POCKET." The thoroughbred Anthropophagite usually
begins with his own relations and friends; and so long as he
confines his voracity to the domestic circle, the law interferes
little, if at all, with his venerable propensities. But when he has
exhausted all that allows itself to be edible in the bosom of
private life, the man-eater falls loose on society, and takes to
prowling,--then "Sauve qui peut!" the laws rouse themselves, put on
their spectacles, call for their wigs and gowns, and the
Anthropophagite turned prowler is not always sure of his dinner. It
is when he has arrived at this stage of development that the man-
eater becomes of importance, enters into the domain of history, and
occupies the thoughts of Moralists.
On the same morning in which Waife thus went forth from the Saracen's
Head in quest of the doctor, but at a later hour, a man, who, to judge by
the elaborate smartness of his attire, and the jaunty assurance of his
saunter, must have wandered from the gay purlieus of Regent Street,
threaded his way along the silent and desolate thoroughfares that
intersect the remotest districts of Bloomsbury. He stopped at the turn
into a small street still more sequestered than those which led to it,
and looked up to the angle on the wall whereon the name of the street
should have been inscribed. But the wall had been lately whitewashed,
and the whitewash had obliterated the expected epigraph. The man
muttered an impatient execration; and, turning round as if to seek a
passenger of whom to make inquiry, beheld on the opposite side of the way
another man apparently engaged in the same research. Involuntarily each
crossed over the road towards the other.
"Pray, sir," quoth the second wayfarer in that desert, "can you tell me
if this is a street that is called a Place,--Podden Place, Upper?"
"Sir," returned the sprucer wayfarer, "it is the question I would have
asked of you."
"Strange!"
"Very strange indeed that more than one person can, in this busy age,
employ himself in discovering a Podden Place! Not a soul to inquire of,
--not a shop that I see, not an orange-stall!"
"Ha!" cried the other, in a hoarse sepulchral voice, "Ha! there is a pot-
boy! Boy! boy! boy! I say. Hold, there! hold! Is this Podden Place,
--Upper?"
"Yes, it be," answered the pot-boy, with a sleepy air, caught in that
sleepy atmosphere; and chiming his pewter against an area rail with a
dull clang, he chanted forth "Pots oho!" with a note as dirge-like as
that which in the City of the Plague chanted "Out with the dead!"
Meanwhile the two wayfarers exchanged bows and parted; the sprucer
wayfarer whether from the indulgence of a reflective mood, or from an
habitual indifference to things and persons not concerning him, ceased to
notice his fellow-solitary, and rather busied himself in sundry little
coquetries appertaining to his own person. He passed his hand through
his hair, re-arranged the cock of his hat, looked complacently at his
boots, which still retained the gloss of the morning's varnish, drew down
his wristbands, and, in a word, gave sign of a man who desires to make an
effect, and feels that he ought to do it. So occupied was he in this
self-commune that when he stopped at length at one of the small doors in
the small street and lifted his hand to the knocker, he started to see
that Wayfarer the Second was by his side. The two men now examined each
other briefly but deliberately. Wayfarer the First was still young,--
certainly handsome, but with an indescribable look about the eye and lip,
from which the other recoiled with an instinctive awe,--a hard look, a
cynical look,--a sidelong, quiet, defying, remorseless look. His clothes
were so new of gloss that they seemed put on for the first time, were
shaped to the prevailing fashion, and of a taste for colours less subdued
than is usual with Englishmen, yet still such as a person of good mien
could wear without incurring the charge of vulgarity, though liable to
that of self-conceit. If you doubted that the man were a gentleman, you
would have been puzzled to guess what else he could be. Were it not for
the look we have mentioned, and which was perhaps not habitual, his
appearance might have been called prepossessing. In his figure there was
the grace, in his step the elasticity which come from just proportions
and muscular strength. In his hand he carried a supple switch-stick,
slight and innocuous to appearance, but weighted at the handle after the
fashion of a life-preserver. The tone of his voice was not displeasing
to the ear, though there might be something artificial in the swell of
it,--the sort of tone men assume when they desire to seem more frank and
off-hand than belongs to their nature,--a sort of rollicking tone which
is to the voice what swagger is to, the gait. Still that look! it
produced on you the effect which might be created by some strange animal,
not without beauty, but deadly to man. Wayfarer the Second was big and
burly, middle-aged, large-whiskered, his complexion dirty. He wore a
wig,--a wig evident, unmistakable,--a wig curled and rusty,--over the wig
a dingy white hat. His black stock fitted tight round his throat, and
across his breast he had thrown the folds of a Scotch plaid.
WAYFARER THE FIRST.--"YOU call here, too,--on Mrs. Crane?"
WAYFARER THE SECOND.--"Mrs. Crane? you too? Strange!"
WAYFARER THE FIRST (with constrained civility).--"Sir, I call on
business,--private business."
WAYFARER THE SECOND (with candid surliness).--"So do I."
WAYFARER THE FIRST.--"Oh!"
WAYFARER THE SECOND.--"Ha! the locks unbar!"
The door opened, and an old meagre woman-servant presented herself.
WAYFARER THE FIRST (gliding before the big man with a serpent's
undulating celerity of movement).--"Mrs. Crane lives here?"--"Yes!"
"She's at home I suppose?"--"Yes!"--"Take up my card; say I come alone,
not with this gentleman."
Wayfarer the Second seems to have been rather put out by the manner of
his rival. He recedes a step.
"You know the lady of this mansion well, sir?" "Extremely well."
"Ha! then I yield you the precedence; I yield it, sir, but conditionally.
You will not be long?"
"Not a moment longer than I can help; the land will be clear for you in
an hour or less."
"Or less, so please you, let it be or less. Servant, sir."
"Sir, yours: come, my Hebe, track the dancers; that is, go up the stairs,
and let me renew the dreams of youth in the eyes of Bella!"
The old woman meanwhile had been turning over the card in her withered
palm, looking from the card to the visitor's face, and then to the card
again, and mumbling to herself. At length she spoke:
"You, Mr. Losely! you!--Jasper Losely! how you be changed! what ha' ye
done to yourself? where's your comeliness? where's the look that stole
ladies' hearts? you, Jasper Losely! you are his goblin!"
"Hold your peace, old hussey!" said the visitor, evidently annoyed at
remarks so disparaging. "I am Jasper Losely, more bronzed of cheek, more
iron of hand." He raised his switch with a threatening gesture, that
might be in play, for the lips wore smiles, or might be in earnest, for
the brows were bent; and pushing into the passage, and shutting the door,
said, "Is your mistress up stairs? show me to her room, or--"
The old crone gave him one angry glance, which sank frightened beneath
the cruel gleam of his eyes, and hastening up the stairs with a quicker
stride than her age seemed to warrant, cried out, "Mistress, mistress!
here is Mr. Losely! Jasper Losely himself!" By the time the visitor had
reached the landing-place of the first floor, a female form had emerged
from a room above, a female face peered over the banisters. Losely
looked up and started as he saw it. A haggard face,--the face of one
over whose life there has passed a blight. When last seen by him it had
possessed beauty, though of a masculine rather than womanly character.
Now of that beauty not a trace! the cheeks shrunk and hollow left the
nose sharp, long, beaked as a bird of prey. The hair, once glossy in its
ebon hue, now grizzled, harsh, neglected, hung in tortured, tangled
meshes,--a study for an artist who would paint a fury. But the eyes were
bright,--brighter than ever; bright now with a glare that lighted up the
whole face bending over the man. In those burning eyes was there love?
was there hate? was there welcome? was there menace? Impossible to
distinguish; but at least one might perceive that there was joy.
"So," said the voice from above, "so we do meet at last, Jasper Losely!
you are come!"
Drawing a loose kind of dressing-robe more closely round her, the
mistress of the house now descended the stairs, rapidly, flittingly, with
a step noiseless as a spectre's, and, grasping Losely firmly by the hand,
led him into a chill, dank, sunless drawing-room, gazing into his face
fixedly all the while.
He winced and writhed. "There, there, let us sit down, my dear Mrs.
Crane."
"And once I was called Bella."
"Ages ago! Basta! All things have their end. Do take those eyes of
yours off my face; they were always so bright! and--really--now they are
perfect burning-glasses! How close it is! Peuh! I am dead tired. May
I ask for a glass of water; a drop of wine in it--or--brandy will do as
well."
"Ho! you have come to brandy and morning drams, eh, Jasper?" said Mrs.
Crane, with a strange, dreary accent. "I, too, once tried if fire could
burn up thought, but it did not succeed with me; that is years ago; and-
there--see the bottles are full still!"
While thus speaking, she had unlocked a chiffonniere of the shape usually
found in "genteel lodgings," and taken out a leathern spirit-case
containing four bottles, with a couple of wine-glasses. This case she
placed on the table before Mr., Losely, and contemplated him at leisure
while he helped himself to the raw spirits.
As she thus stood, an acute student of Lavater might have recognized, in
her harsh and wasted countenance, signs of an original nature superior to
that of her visitor; on her knitted brow, a sense higher in quality than
on his smooth low forehead; on her straight stern lip, less cause for
distrust than in the false good-humour which curved his handsome mouth
into that smile of the fickle, which, responding to mirth but not to
affection, is often lighted and never warmed. It is true that in that
set pressure of her lip there might be cruelty, and, still more, the
secretiveness which can harbour deceit; and yet, by the nervous workings
of that lip, when relieved from such pressure, you would judge the woman
to be rather by natural temperament passionate and impulsive than
systematically cruel or deliberately-false,--false or cruel only as some
predominating passion became the soul's absolute tyrant, and adopted the
tyrant's vices. Above all, in those very lines destructive to beauty
that had been ploughed, not by time, over her sallow cheeks, there was
written the susceptibility to grief, to shame, to the sense of fall,
which was not visible in the unreflective, reckless aspect of the sleek
human animal before her.
In the room, too, there were some evidences of a cultivated taste. On
the walls, book-shelves, containing volumes of a decorous and severe
literature, such as careful parents allow to studious daughters,--the
stately masterpieces of Fenelon and Racine; selections approved by
boarding-schools from Tasso, Dante, Metastasio; amongst English authors,
Addison, Johnson, Blair (his lectures as well as sermons); elementary
works on such sciences as admit female neophytes into their porticos,
if not into their penetralia,--botany, chemistry, astronomy. Prim as
soldiers on parade stood the books,--not a gap in their ranks,--evidently
never now displaced for recreation; well bound, yet faded, dusty; relics
of a bygone life. Some of them might perhaps have been prizes at school,
or birthday gifts from proud relations. There, too, on the table, near
the spirit-case, lay open a once handsome workbox,--no silks now on the
skeleton reels; discoloured, but not by use, in its nest of tarnished
silk slept the golden thimble. There, too, in the corner, near a music-
stand piled high with musical compositions of various schools and
graduated complexity from "lessons for beginners" to the most arduous
gamut of a German oratorio, slunk pathetically a poor lute-harp, the
strings long since broken. There, too, by the window, hung a wire bird-
cage, the bird long since dead. In a word, round the woman gazing on
Jasper Losely, as he complacently drank his brandy, grouped the forlorn
tokens of an early state,--the lost golden age of happy girlish studies,
of harmless girlish tastes.
"Basta, eno'," said Mr. Losely, pushing aside the glass which he had
twice filled and twice drained, "to business. Let me see the child:
I feel up to it now."
A darker shade fell over Arabella Crane's face, as she said," The child!
she is not here! I have disposed of her long ago."
"Eh!--disposed of her! what do you mean?"
"Do you ask as if you feared I had put her out of the world? No! Well,
then,--you come to England to see the child? You miss--you love, the
child of that--of that--" She paused, checked herself, and added in an
altered voice, "of that honest, high-minded gentlewoman whose memory must
be so dear to me,--you love that child; very natural, Jasper."
"Love her! a child I have scarcely seen since she was born! do talk
common-sense. No. But have I not told you that she ought to be money's
worth to me; ay, and she shall be yet, despite that proud man's
disdainful insolence."
"That proud man! what, you have ventured to address him--visit him--since
your return to England?"
"Of course. That's what brought me over. I imagined the man would
rejoice at what I told him, open his pursestrings, lavish blessings and
bank-notes. And the brute would not even believe me; all because--"
"Because you had sold the right to be believed before. I told you, when
I took the child, that you would never succeed there, that--I would never
encourage you in the attempt. But you had sold the future as you sold
your past,--too cheaply, it seems, Jasper."
"Too cheaply, indeed. Who could ever have supposed that I should have
been fobbed off with such a pittance?"
"Who, indeed, Jasper! You were made to spend fortunes, and call them
pittances when spent, Jasper! You should have been a prince, Jasper;
such princely tastes! Trinkets and dress, horses and dice, and plenty of
ladies to look and die! Such princely spirit too! bounding all return
for loyal sacrifice to the honour you vouchsafed in accepting it!"
Uttering this embittered irony, which nevertheless seemed rather to
please than to offend her guest, she kept moving about the room, and
(whether from some drawer in the furniture, or from her own person,
Losely's careless eye did not observe) she suddenly drew forth a
miniature, and, placing it before him, exclaimed, "Ah, but you are
altered from those days; see what you then were!"
Losely's gaze, thus abruptly invited, fixed itself on the effigies of a
youth eminently handsome, and of that kind of beauty which, without being
effeminate, approaches to the fineness and brilliancy of the female
countenance,--a beauty which renders its possessor inconveniently
conspicuous, and too often, by winning that ready admiration which it
costs no effort to obtain, withdraws the desire of applause from
successes to be achieved by labour, and hardens egotism by the excuses it
lends to self-esteem. It is true that this handsome face had not the
elevation bestowed by thoughtful expression but thoughtful expression is
not the attribute a painter seeks to give to the abstract comeliness of
early youth; and it is seldom to be acquired without that constitutional
wear and tear which is injurious to mere physical beauty. And over the
whole countenance was diffused a sunny light, the freshness of buxom
health, of luxuriant vigour; so that even that arrogant vanity which an
acute observer might have detected as the prevailing mental
characteristic seemed but a glad exultation in the gifts of benignant
Nature. Not there the look which, in the matured man gazing on the
bright ghost of his former self, might have daunted the timid and warned
the wise. "And I was like this! True! I remember well when it was
taken, and no one called it flattering," said Mr. Losely, with pathetic
self-condolence. "But I can't be very much changed," he added, with a
half laugh. "At my age one may have a manlier look, yet--"
"Yet still be handsome, Jasper," said Mrs. Crane. "You are so. But look
at me; what am I?"
"Oh, a very fine woman, my dear Crane,--always were. But you neglect
yourself: you should not do that; keep it up to the last. Well, but to
return to the child. You have disposed of her without my consent,
without letting me know?"
"Letting you know! How many years is it since you even gave me your
address! Never fear: she is in good hands."
"Whose? At all events I must see her."
"See her! What for?"
"What for! Hang it, it is natural that, now I am in England, I should at
least wish to know what she is like. And I think it very strange that
you should send her away, and then make all these difficulties. What's
your object? I don't understand it."
"My object? What could be my object but to serve you? At your request I
took, fed, reared a child, whom you could not expect me to love, at my
own cost. Did I ever ask you for a shilling? Did I ever suffer you to
give me one? Never! At last, hearing no more from you, and what little
I heard of you making me think that, if anything happened to me (and I
was very ill at the time), you could only find her a burden,--at last I
say, the old man came to me,--you had given him my address,--and he
offered to take her, and I consented. She is with him."
"The old man! She is with him! And where is he?"
"I don't know."
"Humph; how does he live? Can he have got any money?"
"I don't know."
"Did any old friends take him up?"
"Would he go to old friends?"
Mr. Losely tossed off two fresh glasses of brandy, one after the other,
and, rising, walked to and fro the room, his hands buried in his pockets,
and in no comfortable vein of reflection. At length he paused and said,
"Well, upon the whole, I don't see what I could do with the girl just at
present, though, of course, I ought to know where she is, and with whom.
Tell me, Mrs. Crane, what is she like,--pretty or plain?"
"I suppose the chit would be called pretty,--by some persons at least."
"Very pretty? handsome?" asked Losely, abruptly. "Handsome or not, what
does it signify? what good comes of beauty? You had beauty enough; what
have you done with it?"
At that question, Losely drew himself up with a sudden loftiness of look
and gesture, which, though prompted but by offended vanity, improved the
expression of the countenance, and restored to it much of its earlier
character. Mrs. Crane gazed on him, startled into admiration, and it was
in an altered voice, half reproachful, half bitter, that she continued,
"And now that you are satisfied about her, have you no questions to ask
about me?--what I do? how I live?" "My dear Mrs. Crane, I know that you
are comfortably off, and were never of a mercenary temper. I trust you
are happy, and so forth: I wish I were; things don't prosper with me. If
you could conveniently lend me a five-pound note--"
"You would borrow of me, Jasper? Ah! you come to me in your troubles.
You shall have the money,--five pounds, ten pounds, what you please, but
you will call again for it: you need me now; you will not utterly desert
me now?"
"Best of creatures!--never!" He seized her hand and kissed it. She
withdrew it quickly from his clasp, and, glancing over him from head to
foot, said, "But are you really in want?--you are well-dressed, Jasper;
that you always were."
"Not always; three days ago very much the reverse: but I have had a
trifling aid, and--"
"Aid in England? from whom? where? Not from him whom you say you had the
courage to seek?"
"From whom else? Have I no claim? A miserable alms flung to me. Curse
him! I tell you that man's look and language so galled me,--so galled,"
echoed Losely, shifting his hold from the top of his switch to the
centre, and bringing the murderous weight of the lead down on the palm of
his other hand, "that, if his eye had quitted mine for a moment, I think
I must have brained him, and been--"
"Hanged!" said Mrs. Crane.
"Of course, hanged," returned Losely, resuming the reckless voice and
manner in which there was that peculiar levity which comes from hardness
of heart, as from the steel's hardness comes the blade's play. "But if a
man did not sometimes forget consequences, there would be an end of the
gallows. I am glad that his eye never left mine." And the leaden head
of the switch fell with a dull dumb sound on the floor.
Mrs. Crane made no immediate rejoinder, but fixed on her lawless visitor
a gaze in which there was no womanly fear (though Losely's aspect and
gesture might have sent a thrill through the nerves of many a hardy man),
but which was not without womanly compassion, her countenance gradually
softening more and more, as if under the influence of recollections
mournful but not hostile. At length she said in a low voice, "Poor
Jasper! Is all the vain ambition that made you so false shrunk into a
ferocity that finds you so powerless? Would your existence, after all,
have been harder, poorer, meaner, if your faith had been kept to me?"
Evidently disliking that turn in the conversation, but checking a reply
which might have been rude had no visions of five pounds, ten pounds,
loomed in the distance, Mr. Losely said, "Pshaw! Bella, pshaw! I was a
fool, I dare say, and a sad dog, a very sad dog; but I had always the
greatest regard for you, and always shall! Hillo, what's that? A knock
at the door! Oh, by the by, a queer-looking man, in a white hat, called
at the same time I did, to see you on private business, gave way to me,
said he should come again; may I ask who he is?"
"I cannot guess; no one ever calls here on business except the tax-
gatherer."
The old woman-servant now entered. "A gentleman, ma'am; says his name is
Rugge."
"Rugge,--Rugge; let me think."
"I am here, Mrs. Crane," said the manager, striding in. "You don't,
perhaps, call me to mind by name; but--oho! not gone, sir! Do I intrude
prematurely?"
"No, I have done; good-day, my dear Mrs. Crane."
"Stay, Jasper. I remember you now, Mr. Rugge; take a chair."
She whispered a few words into Losely's ear, then turned to the manager,
and said aloud, "I saw you at Mr. Waife's lodging, at the time he had
that bad accident."
"And I had the honour to accompany you home, ma'am, and--but shall I
speak out before this gentleman?"
"Certainly; you see he is listening to you with attention. This
gentleman and I have no secrets from each other. What has become of that
person? This gentleman wishes to know."
LOSELY.--"Yes, sir, I wish to know-particularly."
RUGGE.--"So do I; that is partly what I came about. You are aware, I
think, ma'am, that I engaged him and Juliet Araminta, that is, Sophy."
LOSELY.--"Sophy? engaged them, sir,--how?"
RUGGE.--"Theatrical line, sir,--Rugge's Exhibition; he was a great actor
once, that fellow Waife."
LOSELY.--"Oh, actor! well, sir, go on."
RUGGE (who in the course of his address turns from the lady to the
gentleman, from the gentleman to the lady, with appropriate gesture and
appealing look).--"But he became a wreck, a block of a man; lost an eye
and his voice too. How ever, to serve him, I took his grandchild and him
too. He left me--shamefully, and ran off with his grandchild, sir. Now,
ma'am, to be plain with you, that little girl I looked upon as my
property,--a very valuable property. She is worth a great deal to me,
and I have been done out of her. If you can help me to get her back,
articled and engaged say for three years, I am willing and happy, ma'am,
to pay something handsome,--uncommon handsome."
MRS. CRANE (loftily).--"Speak to that gentleman; he may treat with you."
LOSELY.--"What do you call uncommon handsome, Mr.--Mr. Tugge?"
RUGGE.--"Rugge! Sir; we sha'n't disagree, I hope, provided you have the
power to get Waife to bind the girl to me."
LOSELY.--"I may have the power to transfer the young lady to your care--
young lady is a more respectful phrase than girl--and possibly to
dispense with Mr. Waife's consent to such arrangement. But excuse me if
I say that I must know a little more of yourself, before I could promise
to exert such a power on your behalf."
RUGGE.--"Sir, I shall be proud to improve our acquaintance. As to Waife,
the old vagabond, he has injured and affronted me, sir. I don't bear
malice, but I have a spirit: Britons have a spirit, sir. And you will
remember, ma'am, that when I accompanied you home, I observed that Mr.
Waife was a mysterious man, and had apparently known better days, and
that when a man is mysterious, and falls into the sear and yellow leaf,
ma'am, without that which should accompany old age, sir, one has a right
to suspect that some time or other, he has done something or other,
ma'am, which makes him fear lest the very stones prate of his whereabout,
sir. And you did not deny, ma'am, that the mystery was suspicious; but
you said, with uncommon good sense, that it was nothing to me what Mr.
Waife had once been, so long as he was of use to me at that particular
season. Since then, sir, he has ceased to be of use,--ceased, too, in
the unhandsomest manner. And if you would, ma'am, from a sense of
justice, just unravel the mystery, put me in possession of the secret,
it might make that base man of use to me again, give me a handle over
him, sir, so that I might awe him into restoring my property, as, morally
speaking, Juliet Araminta most undoubtedly is. That's why I call,--
leaving my company, to which I am a father, orphans for the present. But
I have missed that little girl,--that young lady, sir. I called her a
phenomenon, ma'am; missed her much: it is natural, sir, I appeal to you.
No man can be done out of a valuable property and not feel it, if he has
a heart in his bosom. And if I had her back safe, I should indulge
ambition. I have always had ambition. The theatre at York, sir,--that
is my ambition; I had it from a child, sir; dreamed of it three tunes,
ma'am. If I had back my property in that phenomenon, I would go at the
thing, slap-bang, take the York, and bring out the phenomenon with A
CLAW!"
LOSELY (musingly).--"You say the young lady is a phenomenon, and for this
phenomenon you are willing to pay something handsome,--a vague
expression. Put it into L. s. d."
RUGGE.--"Sir, if she can be bound to me legally for three years, I would
give L100. I did offer to Waife L50,--to you, sir, L100."
Losely's eyes flashed, and his hands opened restlessly. "But, confound
it, where is she? Have you no clew?"
RUGGE.--"No, but we can easily find one; it was not worth my while to
hunt them up before I was quite sure that, if I regained my property in
that phenomenon, the law would protect it."
MRS. CRANE (moving to the door).--"Well, Jasper Losely, you will sell the
young lady, I doubt not; and when you have sold her, let me know." She
came back and whispered, "You will not perhaps now want money from me,
but I shall see you again; for, if you would find the child, you will
need my aid."
"Certainly, my dear friend, I will call again; honour bright."
Mrs. Crane here bowed to the gentlemen, and swept out of the room.
Thus left alone, Losely and Rugge looked at each other with a shy and yet
cunning gaze,--Rugge's hands in his trouser's pockets, his head thrown
back; Losely's hands in voluntarily expanded, his head bewitchingly bent
forward, and a little on one side.
"Sir," said Rugge, at length, "what do you say to a chop and a pint of
wine? Perhaps we could talk more at our ease elsewhere. I am only in
town for a day; left my company thirty miles off,--orphans, as I said
before."
"Mr. Rugge," said Losely, "I have no desire to stay in London, or indeed
in England; and the sooner we can settle this matter the better. Grant
that we find the young lady, you provide for her board and lodging; teach
her your honourable profession; behave, of course, kindly to her."
"Like a father."
"And give to me the sum of L100?"
"That is, if you can legally make her over to me. But, sir, may I
inquire by what authority you would act in this matter?"
"On that head it will be easy to satisfy you; meanwhile I accept your
proposal of an early dinner. Let us adjourn; is it to your house?"
"I have no exact private house in London; but I know a public one,
--commodious."
"Be it so. After you, sir."
As they descended the stairs, the old woman-servant stood at the street
door. Rugge went out first; the woman detained Losely. "Do you find her
altered?"
"Whom? Mrs. Crane?--why, years will tell. But you seem to have known
me; I don't remember you."
"Not Bridget Greggs?"
"Is it possible? I left you a middle-aged, rosy-faced woman. True, I
recognize you now. There's a crown for you. I wish I had more to
spare!"
Bridget pushed back the silver.
"No; I dare not! Take money from you, Jasper Losely! Mistress would not
forgive me!"
Losely, not unreluctantly, restored the crown to his pocket; and, with a
snort rather than sigh of relief, stepped into open daylight. As he
crossed the street to join Rugge, who was waiting for him on the shady
side, he mechanically turned to look back at the house, and, at the open
window of an upper story, he beheld again those shining eyes which had
glared down on him from the stairs. He tried to smile, and waved his
hand feebly. The eyes seemed to return the smile; and as he walked down
the street, arm-in-arm with the ruffian manager, slowly recovering his
springy step, and in the gloss of the new garments that set forth his
still symmetrical proportions, the eyes followed him watchfully,
steadfastly, till his form had vanished, and the dull street was once
more a solitude.
Then Arabella Crane turned from the window. Putting her hand to her
heart, "How it beats!" she muttered; "if in love or in hate, in scorn
or in pity, beats once more with a human emotion. He will come again;
whether for money or for woman's wit, what care I?--he will come. I will
hold, I will cling to him, no more to part; for better for worse, as it
should have been once at the altar. And the child?" she paused; was it
in compunction? "The child!" she continued fiercely, and as if lashing
herself into rage, "the child of that treacherous, hateful mother,--yes!
I will help him to sell her back as a stage-show,--help him in all that
does not lift her to a state from which she may look down with disdain on
me. Revenge on her, on that cruel house: revenge is sweet. Oh! that it
were revenge alone that bids me cling to him who deserves revenge the
most." She closed her burning eyes, and sat down droopingly, rocking
herself to and fro like one in pain.